super geek

16 Sep 2005

the past few days, i’ve been in super geek mode. doing everything from setting up an open source pbx to getting back into computer upgrading and such. i even went and got one of my favorite programs out, omnioutliner, and organized it all. yeah, it’s pretty sad, but i’m a super geek!

asterisk

first thing is asterisk! jorge brought to this my attention and i couldn’t resist. he’s written a nice little guide over at his website, but i recommend going out and checking out the multitude of sites dedicated to this great piece of software. well what is asterisk? asterisk is an open source pbx software package. that’s right, a free and open package that allows you to take advantage of the wonderful technology known as voip. here’s a quote from their site that will give you a better idea of what it does:

Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux, BSD and MacOSX and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in many protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.

Asterisk provides Voicemail services with Directory, Call Conferencing, Interactive Voice Response and Call Queuing. It has support for three-way calling, caller ID services, ADSI, SIP and H.323 (as both client and gateway). Check the Features section for a more complete list.

i have it setup on my osx box right now with two extensions setup to point to two softphone instances i have setup. i have set up with stanaphone and voxee to provide voip incoming and outgoing support respectively. i must say, it’s pretty slick and i have barely scratched the surface. more to come!

upgrades!

kecia and i decided to upgrade our computers the past couple of weeks and it has brought out the geek in me. kecia’s computer (a 2.6ghz intel with 1gb ram) was experiencing some hard drive difficulties and her video card (geforce fx 5200) was not the best for what she wants to do (final fantasy xi). so i decided to get her an ati x850 xt platinum edition. yup, pretty much the best card out there from ati. check it out:

i also installed a brand new maxtor 300gb (16MB cache!) hard drive for kecia to solve her rebooting problems. she’s up and running as i type

as for me, i pretty much only have laptops when it comes to pcs. my only desktop tower is a dual g4 800 macintosh (which is also starting to age). my gaming laptop (a seemingly powerful 3ghz from pro-star) is pretty much dead. it spontaneously turns off when it wants to which leads me to believe its overheating. i was unhappy with this box anyways. being that i spent almost $4,000 on it a couple of years ago, its a hefty investment that really didn’t pay off. i couldn’t really play doom3, half life 2 crawled on it, and final fantasy xi would stutter like crazy. so i pretty much got tired of settling for 2nd best. while doing my thing in the bathroom one evening (i know, tmi), i stumbled across a review on computer gaming magazine. i saw the words “buy this now, don’t be an idiot”. that hurt! i’m not an idiot by no means! so i had to investigate. they were reviewing a killer gaming rig made by cyberpower gaming systems called the gamer ultra xlc:

i read this machine broke records in their 3d benchmark scores and i see why. it comes with dual 10000 rpm drives in raid 0, dual nvidia geforce 7800 gtx’s (in SLI) as well as a mighty amd athlon fx-57 chip. so i ordered one. it should be here soon. my apple cinema 23 inch does more than what i expect on my macintosh, but i need something for my gaming experience as well. so i went with what i knew. a while ago, i ordered kecia a dell 20″ monitor (2005fpw) which has been phenomenal. she’s very happy with and so am i. i ordered one of those too:

so now we have some serious gaming firepower here and won’t need to upgrade for quite some time!

final fantasy xi and world of warcraft

as most of you know, the tokyo gaming show (tgs) began today in tokyo, japan. recently (about 4 weeks ago), i decided to call it quits for final fantasy xi. having spent days worth of time in this game, it was a good decision (see above geekdom). however, during the holidays i got a bit bored and decided i wanted some quick mmo fun and i reinstalled world of warcraft (wow). so now i’m playing wow very sparingly (maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour twice a week). today, at the tgs, the folks who produce final fantasy xi, squarenix, gave us a sneak peak (19MB wmv) at the upcoming features in the highly anticipated expansion pack. and to my surprise, they are introducing new jobs!!! not just new jobs, but a BLUE MAGE job! oh me oh my. i’m torn at the moment whether to return to final fantasy xi. they are NOT making it easy.

thus ending *part* of my super geek activities lately. my podcast is suffering as a result and i plan to get back into the swing of things there real soon! (i promise!). when the geek bug bites, it bites hard